Mill MeadPrimary SchoolLife is for learning; learning is for life

Nursery

Welcome to the autumn term and I hope you and your child are looking forward to a great year of learning!

In Nursery we will be working on getting the children settled into school and familiar with class routines. We do not use a topic-based system as we follow the children’s interests at all times to promote high levels of engagement. This provides the adults with the opportunity to respond and intervene with appropriate strategies; moving children on to their ‘next steps’ on a moment-by-moment basis.

We will be focusing on developing children’s abilities across all 7 of the areas of learning:

Physical Development

Communication and Language

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Literacy

Maths

Understanding the World

Expressive Arts and Design

Equally importantly, we work with children to help them develop the characteristics of effective learning:

Playing and Exploring – do they investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’?

Active Learning – do they concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements?

Creating and Thinking Critically – do they have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things?

Resources and Support

I have included links to a few documents below. What To Expect, When? is really useful.It gives ideas for how to support your child's learning across the seven areas of development.Nursery children are typically working within the 30-50 or 40-60 month age bands (pages 20-31) so that's where you'll find guidance on typical child development and ideas to help you support your child.

The 30-50 and 40-60 month early years outcomes documents detail the broad range of skills that we will be working towards in each area of learning. Children all develop at different rates and this document can be used as a guide to support the individual child’s development pathway.

Letters and Sounds Phase One Introduction is the starting point for phonics in nursery. Phonics is interwoven into our daily routine as much as possible.The children will not be aware that they are being taught it or even what phonics means just yet.This document was written as guidance for teachers so contains lots of jargon and information but if you skip past the first section to the activities it is packed full of ideas for games that you can play with your child.These can be built into daily life at home as they are at school rather than being taught in a more formal way.

There are also links to some brilliant books and websites that you can use at home.

Above all else learning in nursery should be FUN! And the more you can build activities into every day life the more your child will be engaged and therefore actively learning.

If you have any queries or questions I am available most mornings after school, or you can make an appointment via the office.

Please do keep checking back for updates, and follow us on Twitter if you aren't yet doing so - this will give you an excellent insight to all of the exciting activities that Nursery and the rest of the school get up to.